Written as a student project with future Alien writer Dan O'Bannon, John Carpenter's ingenious no-budget directorial debut, named after a Grateful Dead song was the first stoner sci-fi pic. On a scuzzy spaceship far away, four furry freak surf dude astronauts are bored out of their skulls on a long-haul mission to destroy unstable planets, and plagued by troubles when their talking bomb gets ideas of its own and the alien "pet" O'Bannon has smuggled aboard escapes. Sideswipes at Kubrick's 2001 are entirely intentional; the attack of the munchies the movie brings on pure coincidence.
So-so sci-fi rom-com from John Carpenter, with Chevy Chase as a stockbroker who gets caught in a nuclear accident that turns him invisible; Daryl Hannah plays his love interest, Sam Neill the CIA heavy chasing him. Totally dependent on hackneyed visual gags and special effects that were superseded long ago, what remains is indulgent fluff.
Underrated late John Wayne vehicle, a bracing 1971 western with The Duke, in formidable form, in hot pursuit of Richard Boone's gang of colourfully villainous and cheerfully murderous kidnappers. Surprisingly brutal, with Boone a fearsome presence and several very bloody shoot-outs. Much enjoyed by John Carpenter, who appropriated the "I thought you were dead" catchline for Escape From New York.
John Carpenter was 24 when he shot one of the most influential films in movie history in just 20 days, on a budget of just over $300,000, for the apparently meagre salary of $10,000, a cut of the profits and his name above the title. Looking back, a quarter of a century on, it was probably the best deal he ever made. After a faltering opening run, Halloween quickly became a critically acclaimed box-office smash that went on to gross over $50 million and spawned a raft of sequels and an entire industry of mostly inferior slasher movies.
DIRECTED BY Ridley Scott
STARRING Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Hatry Dean Stanton
Opened October 31, Cert 15, 115 mins
Scott's franchise-launching 1979 future-shocker is one of those rare, pure, primal films that works as both highbrow modern myth and trouser-soiling midnight movie.
Camp Crystal Lake reopens 20 years after the tragic death of young Jason Vorhees and no one is safe from the ingenious butchery. There's no hip hockey mask and few cute one-liners—just a catalogue of slaughter and a neat double-twist ending as director Sean Cunningham attempted to replicate the success of John Carpenter's Halloween.
